Colorado
Gov. Bill Ritter, Commissioner of Education Dwight D. Jones and State
Board of Education Vice-Chairman Randy DeHoff today congratulated the
state’s trail blazing schools and districts at a celebration held at the
Colorado Department of Education.

“Congratulations
to the schools and districts who are successfully preparing your
students to meet the state’s new, higher standards,” said Gov. Ritter.
“We have been striving to raise the bar in our education system and you
have stepped up to the plate and demonstrated a strong commitment to
helping all of our students succeed.”

In all, 14
districts were honored as “Accredited with Distinction” under the
Education Accountability Act of 2009. The 14 high-performing
districts—out of 183 total school districts and school organizations
that received accreditation ratings—were identified under the new
accountability system, which uses an expanded set of indicators and
places emphasis on academic growth and success in preparing students for
college and career readiness.

Forty-five schools
were also recognized as “Centers of Excellence.” That designation, also
established by the Colorado State Legislature,
recognizes schools that demonstrate the
highest sustained rates of student growth as measured by the Colorado
Growth Model among those that have at least 75 percent at-risk pupils in
their student population. The event today honored all winners from 2009,
the first year the award was given, as well as those from 2010.

“This is a
hallmark day,” said Commissioner Jones. “You are true gems, the schools
and districts making a difference for students. We celebrate your
contributions and thank you for your hard work.”

(Note: A complete
list of honored districts and schools is below. For complete information
on results from the first implementation cycle of the Education
Accountability Act and more background about how districts “Accredited
with Distinction” and “Centers of Excellence Schools” were selected,
visit the SchoolView page at
www.schoolview.org/performance.asp

Positive Achievement Gap Trends

Associate Commissioner Richard Wenning noted positive statewide trends
in the efforts to close achievement gaps, particularly between
subgroups defined by income and
ethnicity.

“To close
achievement gaps, we must first close the gaps in the rates of academic
growth among different groups of students,” said Wenning. “And
Colorado’s students have shown solid improvement in this area.”

Using data
generated by the Colorado Growth Model, Wenning noted that the
difference in academic growth rates in reading between Latino and white
students has narrowed from 7 percentiles in 2004 to 2 percentiles in
2010. Over the same period, the gap in growth rates between black and
white students has narrowed by 3 percentiles to 1 percentile and the gap
between students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (an indicator
of poverty) and those not eligible for free or reduced-price lunch
narrowed from 7 percentiles to 3 percentiles.

The data are
similar for math. The Latino-white gap narrowed over the six-year span
from 7 percentiles to 4; the black-white gap narrowed from 9 percentiles
to 2; the free and reduced-price lunch gap narrowed from 7 percentiles
to 5.

“This means we
have come a long way in ensuring that students make at least a year’s
growth in a year’s time,” said Wenning. “Closing growth gaps has
translated into a modest closing of the proficiency gaps in reading and
math, but they remain far too large.”

As measured by the
Colorado Student Assessment Program, current gaps in reading range from
25 percentage points between Latino and white students to 29 percentage
points between black and white students. Gaps in mathematics are equally
large.

For students who
start off behind, Wenning said, the data reveal a troubling trend—too
few students demonstrate enough growth to “catch up” to proficiency.
Just 35 percent of students below proficient in reading and 13 percent
of students below proficient in math are making enough progress to catch
up.

“Without question,
we have major challenges ahead that require us to follow through with
the education reform agenda that Governor Ritter and the legislature
have enacted on a bipartisan basis,” said Wenning. “While we have made
strong progress in closing the gap in students making a year’s growth in
a year’s time, we have far to go in ensuring that all of our students
who start behind make adequate progress to become college and career
ready. Most students that start off below grade level, stay behind. And
that fact sums up our performance challenge as a state and as a nation.”

SchoolView 2.0

The Colorado
Department of Education today also announced the debut of SchoolView
Data Center, an interactive online tool that delivers school, district
and state performance data.

“The
new SchoolView Data Center puts an enormous amount of school data right
at your fingertips and all in one place,” said State Board of Education
Vice-Chairman Randy DeHoff.

The
Data Center includes a state-level overview of performance on
assessments, demographics, district and school performance and a host of
other data previously reported on the printed (and Web-based) School
Accountability Reports. It also serves as a resource through which users
can access district and school performance frameworks, the reports used
to determine districts’ accreditation ratings and school improvement
plan types.

Through SchoolView, users may also access the Colorado Growth Model with
all its new features including the ability to share data via social
networks, new mapping and search functionality, and new ways to compare
performance between schools and districts.